Politifact and FactCheck.org can be very useful if you actually read what they write, and use your knowledge, in context, to add to your understanding of the facts surrounding what candidates say. But I’ve found their top line true vs. false judgments to be puzzling or even comical in the way they seem to ignore the substance and intent of the utterances they’re rating.
Sometimes it’s as if a candidate were to tell a midwest audience “I spoke in Boston yesterday,” and one of these factcheck orgnizations rated it a lie, explaining “she had an event in Cambridge, MA, yesterday, but never set foot in the nearby city of Boston.”
Here’s an example of what I mean, from last night’s debate. When Obama said “the essence of [Romney & Ryan’s] plan is that he would turn Medicare into a voucher program. It’s called premium support, but it’s understood to be a voucher program.” – factcheck.org tweeted:
Obama says Romney-Ryan Medicare plan a “voucher” plan. Not exactly. http://ow.ly/ecMAl
… and linked to this already-written article on Obama’s stump speech in which they address the “voucher” matter:
He attacks Romney’s plan for Medicare as a “voucher” system that would leave seniors “at the mercy of insurance companies,” when the fact is, it’s structured the same as the system Obama’s health care law sets up for subsidizing private insurance for persons under age 65.
Technically correct – the best kind of correct! That could be their slogan.
Yes, as I’ve actually written in other places, a good way to sum up Ryan’s plan for Medicare is that he wants to turn it into something very much like Obamacare* – which is indeed equivalent to a voucher system. But while that’s a major upgrade for people under retirement age, who pre-Obamacare get much less than this, it’d be a severe downgrade for people currently on Medicare, who currently get guaranteed – and good – insurance. Factcheck’s implication that Ryan’s just trying to do the same thing Obama already did is bizarre considering that key difference.
But back to truth-rating Obama’s statement: Obama said “It’s called premium support, but it’s understood to be a voucher program” – and that is exactly correct. Amusingly, Politifact had previously explained all of this and ruled that it is reasonable to call Ryan’s system “vouchers”. Although they rated it “mostly true” to simply call it a voucher system, because it’s a slightly different kind of voucher called “premium support” that has some features not all vouchers had … Obama in the debate said directly that it’s “premium support” and that’s essentially a kind of voucher system. He was 100% correct, no qualifiers, in this case.
So, do make heavy use of Politifact and FactCheck.org to understand the facts behind what candidates say. But don’t be misled by their ratings or take them at face value; read, analyze, and come to your own conclusions.
* Ryan’s newer version of his plan is like Obamacare + public option, but rigged to make the public option fail. However, his original plan was like Obamacare w/o public option; he only changed it under pressure. Since his newer plan is rigged to make its public option (traditional Medicare) fail, I don’t consider it that big a difference.
to the truth. There are partial truths. There are true statements that are factually correct, but very misleading. The problem with limiting fact checking to the true and false continuum is that fails to do justice to statements that are technically true, but extremely misleading.
Misleading should be its own category independent of true or false.
For example, Romney said last night,
In fact, the US government’s budget deficit has decreased each year Obama has been in office, so Romney’s statement the “he’s doubled it” is flatly false. But Romney immediately followed that statement by talking about debt. What if he honestly misspoke, and actually meant to say that Obama has doubled the debt, not the deficit?
If so, then his statement wouldn’t have been too far off from technically true. Our gross debt has gone from a little over $10 trillion in 2008 to a little under $20 trillion now. It hasn’t quite doubled, but it’s not far.
On the other hand, this would be very misleading, because as I noted above, Obama has slowed down the growth of the debt, which seems to indicate we’re on a path to eventually having less debt; the reason it has grown so much is that he started with a big gaping budget hole, so blaming him for doubling the debt would be blaming him for what the Bush administration did. It would be technically true but misleading. It would be additionally misleading to pair Obama’s promise to reduce the deficit with the fact that the debt has increased.
But it would be technically correct, more or less.
Still, on balance, I think the fact checkers can be cognizant of all of these levels, and assign an overall rating that takes into account correctness, intent, magnitude, and misleading. The could synthesize something that’s relatively consistent overall. But then they’d have to use some judgement, and they’re in the game of pretending they can get away without exercising judgement. That’s what makes their ratings so misleading and puzzlingly odd.
on Medicare. It’s bizarre that the two fact-checkers offered essentially opposite verdicts on the same statement; even more bizarre that FactCheck didn’t actually evaluate the truth of the statement they were claiming to evaluate. Of course, PolitiFact is (basically) right in this case, but they’ve screwed up in the past as well. The fact-checkers have really done themselves a disservice in this cycle, and have made it much easier for candidates to dismiss them as irrelevant.
interviewed, and I have to say I was troubled. She basically blamed politicians for avoiding the truth. Sure, they deserve some blame, but it’s the system that doesn’t work.
The fact is, many people want is a simple story that reinforces their biases and involves little or no pain. Politicians can’t get elected challenging them and telling them its going to hurt. Obama could not, for example, come out and say, we need to raises taxes by a certain amount on all people, even if it’s the truth. People refuse to handle the truth, even if they can actually handle it.
Jamieson made it clear that she thought that all that needed to happen was for politicians to have their feet held to the fire by the media and all would be well. As Romney and Lyin’ Ryan have shown, you can ignore the media when it says you lie, and it doesn’t matter much.
Rmoney and Ryan aren’t breaking any new ground here: Bush and Cheney lied with impunity for 10 years worth of their 8 years in office. They paid absolutely no price. And before that, lies regarding the Clintons were profuse and abundant… And both Reagan and Bush Sr had convieniently fallow memories about Iran/Contra
You have to go back to Nixon for a national politician who paid any kind of price for deception: It’s funny (almost) that Nixon got away with a great deal of stuff but what ultimately did him in was his deceit: the senate did hold his feet to the fire.